Forget
by Polly Lynn
Summary: It's been seventy-one days since she told him that she needed time. Seventy-one days of the only silence that matters. Wherever she is, he'll never be any nearer." Set between S3 & 4—really in the middle of "Rise," (4 x 01). And AU, I guess? The premise is that Beckett is back in the city for weeks before she returns to the 12th. Potential refs to anything aired up through Rise.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Forget

WC: ~1900, this chapter

Rating: T

Summary: "It's been seventy-one days since she told him that she needed time. Seventy-one days of the only silence that matters. Wherever she is, he'll never be any nearer." Set between seasons 3 and 4—really in the middle of "Rise," (4 x 01) I suppose. And AU, I guess? The premise is that Beckett is back in the city for weeks before she returns to the 12th.

A/N: Uh. Yeah. Dunno. Four-ish chapters?

* * *

The city is harder than she ever imagined it could be. Some nights she weeps for it. The ache she feels here. Back inside the familiar boundaries. The lines enfolding her life-long home. Everything she's ever loved. Some nights she presses her forehead to the living room glass and sobs.

Because everything hurts. The sounds and smells and the crush of bodies on the streets. How fast everything moves. How fast life goes by. It all rips through her. She's trapped in the howling mess of her own mind. The howling mess of a broken body that hurts every second. She's nothing but ragged edges that bleed and bleed and never meet. Being back is harder than she ever imagined.

She thought it would be better. To be home. A different kind of silence than her dad's cabin. Silence she knows. Silence she's carved out for herself over the years. Built up from nothing to fill her own space. Her own things. She thought it would be better, but that's hard, too. It's all so _hard. _

Clothes that her scars won't let her wear, one way or another. Favorite things taken from her. Unforgiving necklines. Fasteners she can't face with stiff arms. Stiff everything and shaking fingers. The unkind drape of fabric over too-sharp angles. A body she no longer recognizes.

More than that taken from her. Some days it's as if there's nothing here she can have. Hers and not hers. Mugs and linens set too high up by some smug version of herself. Some immortal. Someone invulnerable laying things out just so to hurt her. To hurt the broken future self she is now. Pots and her favorite skillet. Everything too heavy for her to manage. Everything too painful.

She hardly eats. She hardly sleeps. She keeps the city through the window, mostly. Glass between her and life, such as it is.

It's not better here. It's not better to be back. It's a different kind of worse and she weeps for that, too.

She weeps for him. She won't let herself say it. Not even to the window. Not to the ceiling or the walls or the frayed sleeves of the only sweater that seems warm enough in the middle of the night. When she sits stiffly in the living room chair and stares out the glass, her spine listing to one side. The only position her broken body will allow her by night. She won't even let herself think it, but she weeps for him, too.

Because he's nearer. Because he's not.

It's been seventy-one days since she told him that she needed time. Seventy-one days of the only silence that matters.

Wherever she is, he'll never be any nearer.

It's harder than she ever imagined.

* * *

He thought he knew what it was to hurt. He thought he'd learned long before her. Packed away the parts of himself that remembered how to feel that deeply. He thought he knew.

Maybe he had. Once upon a time. Kyra leaving. Meredith and years of a lonely life crowded with people. Everyone clapping him on the back and telling him he was a lucky man. That he must be happy. Telling himself he was. As happy as it was in him to be since he'd learned how to hurt.

Maybe he had. Maybe he knew all that time. Maybe he forgot.

But this has felt like learning. The last three years. Learning all over again to hurt or knowing how—really how—for the first time. Why does it matter which it is? He asks himself that, again and again.

It's just that he thought he knew. He worries at it. Twists and prods the academic point about when it started. He has the time. He has nothing but time when the dead of night stretches on like it does now. He counts back.

He thought he knew when her hand dropped away from his face. When he chattered her name out, even as his blood slowed to a thick crawl. The last thing alive in him a cry for her. A howl. Lunatic grief like he'd never imagined. Conviction that she was dying in his arms.

He thought he knew watching from afar. Waking with her name dragging at his tongue. Asking.

_Beckett. Where is she? _

Needing to know before anything else—before he was sure that was breath going in and out and blood moving again in his own veins—that she was still in the world. _Beckett. _Watching her step into another man's arms. Knowing and not knowing that she didn't love him. Knowing and not knowing.

He thought he knew with the sun beating down on him. Suffocating in black. Annoyed by the heat in the thick of everything. Rank sweat blinding him and life pouring out of her. Dying in his arms again. In broad daylight this time. Standing with her and watching her fall. Helpless. Fighting his way into the ambulance. The piercing wail of the monitor and the words. _We lost her. _The whir and sizzle and brutal thud of the defibrillator.

Josh coming for him and anguish welling up. The words fracturing everything else. Blazing.

_You did this. She was shot because of you._

He thought that was pain. It was. All of it. Any of it. Each moment discrete. Shelved in glass and breaking open in his head. There again when he's done feeling it. Filled to paper-thin walls and waiting for next time. Each discrete moment. Pain or an incredible facsimile.

He practically has to schedule his nightmares about all the ways he's almost lost her. All the things that have come so close to taking her from him.

But none of them count. He's been fooling himself all along.

He knows pain now. She left. Took herself from him. It's not freezing to death or Josh or the world ending. She left, and it's nothing he can fight.

_I'll call you, _ok_? _

She sent him away.

It's been seventy-four days. He knows now.

* * *

She walks at night. She's supposed to walk. The physical therapist nags and nags. She doesn't care about that. She barely bothers to meet his eyes, and he has no patience for her. For the sullen, to-the-letter approach that's all she has. Nagging wouldn't make a bit of difference, but she hurts if she goes too long without it. Her spine twists, and her ribs crack in place. Her hips ache. Toes and kneecaps. Prominences and hollows she never knew she had. She goes brittle from head to toe. She hurts more.

But daytime is still too much. Bright light on glass and shoulders brushing hers. Unexpected elbows and sound. Strangers' voices in her ear. Heat and all that life moving so fast. It's still too much. Far more than battered mind and broken body will allow her, so she walks at night.

It's bad enough. She's afraid every second. She hates herself for it. She hates the city and the hole running through the middle of her. She hates that the only thing to fill it is fear, but that's the reality. That's her life now.

She's afraid. Familiar streets that are too empty. Sidewalks that aren't empty enough, even at night. She's afraid of breaking. Pushing herself too far. Faster than the fragile pieces of her body can go.

She's afraid of herself. Of her mind stranding her. Leaving her to shake on a park bench when she can't go a step further, too weak even to flag down a cab for a long, long while. Too overwhelmed and jagged inside to choke out her address.

She walks slowly. Hugs the wall and scans ahead for doorways. For hollows in the brickwork and escape routes between newspaper boxes. For the way home. The quickest. The easiest. The way back to all the things she can't have.

She walks with her head down. With hands stuffed deep into the pockets of a jacket that's far too warm for the downhill slide of summer. For heat that rises up from the pavement well into the night A jacket she tries to leave behind every time, but she can't. She _can't_.

She walks nowhere. Tight laps around her building at first. Spelling out the letters of her street. A chant to occupy tongue and mind and fingers. To take her there and back again. But she pushes herself as the days add up and the nights grow longer. She tries. A half block here. An alley one night, but it's a mistake. She stumbles home, teeth chattering in the heat, a long time later. A long time, the clock insists, and she doesn't remember.

Still, she pushes herself. It's eighty-seven now. Eighty-seven days, and she adds a little every night. She sets out earlier. Goes farther. Makes herself walk nowhere and back.

It's been eighty-seven days when she sees him. A block away, but she knows the lines of his shoulders. The way his chin tips to the side, because he's talking to himself. Not to himself. To someone in his head. Nikki or some reporter. Esposito, because the perfect comeback always hits him later.

_Her. _

He talks to her in his head a lot. She can't count the times she's been on the receiving end of a wink and a knowing look. An inside joke she's never heard, but he thinks she has. He's sure she has, because he talks to her in his head. He used to. It's been eighty-seven days now, and who knows? Who knows.

She sees him and thinks nothing of it. Why should she? She sees him everywhere. Pouring coffee at her kitchen counter. Lingering shyly on her doorstep with flowers. Standing by her side with the shutters flung wide.

_Sometimes I forget you live with this everyday._

She sees him and stops. Not hiding. She stops in the middle of the sidewalk on the far side of the street and watches. Something like pleasure rippling through her. Something like peace, though it takes a while to recognize. It's been eighty-seven days.

She sees him and starts again. Her body comes alive. Pain, but joy, too. Lightness and frustration. Longing and . . . _rightness._ Completion and the corners of her life snapping into place. Home at last. The right silence inside and out.

She sees him and her mouth opens. Her hand raises. She steps toward the curb. A cab streaks by, horn blaring, and she falls. She drops to her knees. Forehead to the pavement, she cowers in the shadow of a lampost.

He turns briefly toward the commotion. He looks, then looks away. His face catches the light. Just an instant but she _sees _him.

He's broken. Utterly. No ease in the lines of his mouth. Shadows and tight unhappiness around his eyes. Defeat in the slow, dull swing of his head. Toward her—toward the sound—and back again, eyes on the ground as he goes nowhere.

It's just an instant, but she knows him in the space of it. An expanse of time too brief to count, but she knows everything. The weight of eighty-seven days. The burden of silence. She knows that he does this every night. He walks alone. That he has for a long, long while.

A long while, but not all of it. Not eighty-seven days. He would have hoped at first. Believed in her like he always has. But these are his nights now. She knows that.

She knows he's broken. That he's going nowhere.

She follows.


	2. Chapter 2

Title: Forget, Ch. 2

WC: ~1400, this chapter; 3300 so far

Rating: T

Summary: "It's been seventy-one days since she told him that she needed time. Seventy-one days of the only silence that matters. Wherever she is, he'll never be any nearer." Set between seasons 3 and 4—really in the middle of "Rise," (4 x 01) I suppose. And AU, I guess? The premise is that Beckett is back in the city for weeks before she returns to the 12th.

A/N: I apologize for the wait. I'm going to try very hard to finish this before the year is up. Thank you very much for reading and reviewing chapter 1.

* * *

He knows she's there.

It's not that he sees her. He just _knows._

He's curious about it. In a far-off kind of way, with his feet moving beneath him. With storefronts disappearing out of the corner of his eye and the scenery changing as it does—as it has all these nights—he wonders _how_ he knows.

His mind is ruthless about it. His broken heart. Whichever or both. They're in agreement for once. There's never a moment when it feels like a wish or a sign or things coming right. There's not a single second when he thinks it means something.

She's just there. But he does wonder how he knows.

He wonders if it might be a glimpse, really. If it might be as mundane as that. Light reaching cells, like every image the eye takes in. He read somewhere that he sees more than he sees. That everyone alive moves through the world learning how _not_ to see. How to filter the constant barrage of image. The mind like a shutter, managing. Exlcuding. A frantic flicker of noticing and not noticing.

The writer in him hates the very thought. That every blink could be a crisis. An unseen fork in the road. A decision of some kind that can't be unmade with every foot falling unnoticed on to one path, not the other. Choice snatched away and everything in life left to chaos. The glint of sunlight on a glass scope, once, twice, three times. Unseen 'till the last. His life. Hers. Droplets running one way, not the other, down the back of a dying hand.

The writer in him protests. What little there is left protests, but it could be that simple. It could be how he knows she's there now. In _this _moment. When he's seen her a hundred times before. In a hundred hundred moments he's seen her and known every one for a fantasy. A dream.

It's probably as simple as seeing, but he wonders about it. The bigger picture and everything he hasn't seen along the way. How many times he's been the fool who just _won't _see.

As for her, she's just there. He knows.

He wonders _why now?_ Another practical matter to busy his mind. Eighty-seven days and _why now?_ But that leaves him soon enough. He doesn't wonder long. Chance without meaning. Heart and mind in agreement again. She hasn't come for him. The final act unfolded months ago. Eighty-seven days ago.

Why now? It's just the unkindness of entropy, as uncaring as anything else. In a city of eight million people, it was bound to happen sometime. It shouldn't surprise him. It doesn't, really.

Why _shouldn't_ it happen today? Chance doesn't mark time the way he does. It doesn't care how long it's been since he ran out of fingers and toes and hope. Physics doesn't know if it's been eighty-seven days or a thousand. If it's tomorrow or the day he dies.

_Eighty-seven days. _

He's out of questions then. _How? Why now?_ Asked and answered and there's only one thing left in it. It's not even a question. His mind won't frame it and his heart is done with all that. It's done with _why?_ and what things mean. What anything means.

She's there. He knows. It doesn't make a difference. That's the whole truth of it.

It's nothing more than the blare of a cab horn that really draws his eye to the far side of the street. He sees her then, he supposes. Light reaching cells and nothing more, then. Image, afterimage, and the strangeness of it all. The crown of her head. Fingers knotted behind, sheltering.

He sees her then, but he already knew. It's all the same, before and after. Seeing her—_knowing_—doesn't slow his steps or change his trajectory. He moves on as before. As he has, from breath to breath, since he gave up. He stays the course. A straight line going nowhere. Burning seconds and minutes and hours and days.

She's there, he knows, and this is the rest of his life.

It doesn't matter where she is. Her position in time and space have nothing to do with him anymore.

It hurts worse than anything, and this is the rest of his life.

* * *

He sets a brutal pace.

It _feels_ brutal, but the scenery says different. She counts the seconds between streetlights. His heavy, deliberate steps from doorway to doorway. She anchors her mind with the exercise. Seconds and footfalls and street numbers. They add up.

He's moving slowly. He's moving with care, like he expects the world to rise up and hurt him. Like he's guarding against it. He's broken, too, and the days weigh on him. He has nowhere in mind and no time he needs to be there. But, to her, the pace feels brutal in more ways than one.

It's faster than she can go. Her breath comes hard before the first streetcorner. A stoplight, but no respite. No moment to pull air into her lungs. He swings his head from side to side, not really seeing, and crosses against it.

She can't follow. The traffic is far off yet but coming steadily. Headlights and glinting chrome grills like angry faces. Menacing and coming steadily on. Her ribs catch hooks of pain and she's light headed. It's faster than she can go. She needs to follow. She knows she won't make it. She leans against a newspaper box. Waits as he recedes and the fear makes itself known.

She can't do it. She can't go after him.

She can't _not. _Pain and airlessness and fear give way to something else. A tiny corner of silence inside her. The rightness in the moment she first saw him. Solidity. Realness and potential she refuses to let go. She can't _not _go after him.

But the fear drags at her feet. It slows her. Makes her hug the wall and it whispers. That it's farther than she can go at stretch. That she's all her fingers and all her toes and then some away from home and there's no shelter here. Nowhere to press shoulderblades to solid brick and hands to thighs and she _can't. _She can't do this.

A car rolls by, dark windows rattling with cranked up bass. A shriek goes up from a shoving group of teenagers. Her heart pounds. She breaks for shadow. Scrabbles for something solid and knuckles meet sharp corners. Blood comes. It wells up in raw places and her scars burn.

All of her burns. She's a riot of flames, inside and out. Pain. Exhaustion. Fear. Her mind is a black tangle of fear and he's small, smaller, smallest in the distance.

She's not beside him. That's the worst of all. The most brutal. She's hobbling and out of step and she should _be _there. Her feet should strike the pavement in rhythm with his. Side by side. Together at every turn, not each of them alone.

But they are alone. He is and she is and this is her doing.

She falls still. Stops in the middle of the sidewalk, far from shelter, and strains up on her toes to look. To see for as many moments as she can. She strains up, and It hurts. It _hurts_.

He moves alone toward the vanishing point. Any second he'll disappear and the last breath in her rises up. A cry waiting.

He stops then. At the last possible moment, he stops. His hands find his pockets and his shoulders hunch in a gesture so familiar she can taste it. So familiar that she almost spends the last breath in her crying out.

He turns. It's not even an instant, but he turns. She sees him in profile. Brow, nose, chin like he's beside her. Like things are as they should be.

But they're not. It's a glance over his shoulder. Not even an instant and he's gone.

_He knows. _

It dawns on her as he winks out of sight. Certainty of it taking his place in the world like conservation of mass. She sees her life before this moment and after. No uncertainty on either side of it.

He knows she's there.

He's known for a hundred doorways and so many seconds that she lost count. And he didn't miss a single step. Never slowed or faltered. He's known all along, and it's nothing to him that she's there. Nothing.

It almost takes her to her knees all over again.

Almost.


End file.
